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| Headline |
Author |
Published |
Section |
Ask a Brokeass: Won't you be my neighbor?
More high-tech solutions for low-tech ideas |
Kate Sheppard |
16 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| I first mentioned 'neighborrow' a few weeks ago, in a column on the virtues of sharing. This week, we've got an interview with neighborrow founder Adam Berk, who gives us some background on how and why he started the site in his New York apartment building. The basic premise of neighborrow is that it makes no sense to buy stuff when you can get it from your neighbors for free. The site allows you to pool resources with the people who live near you. Everyone can lis ... |
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| Topics: green living, placemaking, recycling, websites (all these topics) |
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Electric cars a-comin'
Comin' 'round the bend |
David Roberts |
14 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Coming to a showroom near you: a $30,000 all-electric sedan with a top speed of 80mph and a range of 120 miles per charge. Why the low price? It's made in China, with cheap labor and advanced lithium ion batteries that came out of government-funded research. There's competition: Phoenix Motors has a four-door utility truck with similar performance capabilities that it's planning on selling to the public around the same time. And Tesla Motors, makers of the $100, ... |
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| Topics: cars, electric vehicles, green living, placemaking (all these topics) |
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A mile in my shoes
Debunking the notion that walking is bad for the planet |
Clark Williams-Derry |
10 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Sheesh. Wouldn't you know it, the "walking is bad for the planet" meme has reared its head yet again, this time in a British newspaper: Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk ... than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. This made its way to the top of Digg over the w ... |
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| Topics: agriculture, energy, energy efficiency, food, green living, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Vehicle of change
The Big Green Bus rides again |
Sarah van Schagen |
10 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Witness the Big Green Bus. Hard to miss, even amid the glaring sun and smog at Bonnaroo. I happened upon the crew of Dartmouth students at the festival last year and got just a few minutes to chat with them. This year, I sought them out on the festival grounds and then met up with them again when they rolled into Seattle last weekend.During their 12,000-mile trek this summer, the Big Green Busriders are stopping at various events and landmarks ranging from a Doobie ... |
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| Topics: biofuels, education, energy, green living, innovation, placemaking, tech (all these topics) |
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Frogs love bikes
Paris bike rental scheme takes off |
David Roberts |
09 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| But wait, I thought bikes were impractical! Taxi drivers and other critics said that it would never work, but three weeks after Paris was sprinkled with 10,000 self-service bicycles, the scheme is proving a triumph and a new pedalling army appears to be taming the city's famously fierce traffic. Bertrand Delanoë, the city's mayor, and his green-minded administration are jubilant at the gusto with which Parisians and visitors have taken to the heavy grey cycles th ... |
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| Topics: bikes, France, green living, placemaking (all these topics) |
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World's first carbon (and car) free city planned
Can it happen here? |
Jon Rynn |
09 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| From CNNMoney.com: It may seem strange that the emirate of Abu Dhabi, one of the planet's largest suppliers of oil, is planning to build the world's first carbon-neutral city. But in fact, it makes a lot of financial sense. The 3.7-square-mile city, called Masdar, will cut its electricity bill by harnessing wind, solar, and geothermal energy, while a total ban on cars within city walls should reduce the long-term health costs associated with smog. Masdar will be filled ... |
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| Topics: green living, placemaking, United Arab Emirates, urban planning (all these topics) |
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SpotBus
The next generation of riding transit |
Eric de Place |
07 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Riding transit just got way, way, easier. A new website called SpotBus is wildly better than existing online trip planners. For one thing, you can enter destinations like a normal person -- 'Ballard,' or 'Ikea,' or 'ferry,' or whatever -- not some arcane intersection. It's so much faster and more intuitive that it feels like giving up your old gimcrack five-disc CD changer for an iPod. It only works in the Puget Sound area, but there's no reason something similar co ... |
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| Topics: green living, placemaking, public transportation, websites (all these topics) |
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Very well said
The green cartopia ain't likely to happen |
JMG |
06 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Kurt Cobb writes a smart and sensible review of Who Killed the Electric Car? Excerpt follows: The documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? is an excellent murder mystery filled with dislikable corporate and government villains. It also features heroic engineers, salespeople and average citizens as well as a sprinkling of good-looking actors and actresses who play, well, themselves. As I watched the film recently for the first time, I found myself doing something that I don't ... |
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| Topics: cars, electric vehicles, green living, hybrids, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Carbon Conscious Consumer contest
Go car-free, win stuff |
Erik Hoffner |
03 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Here's something most Gristers are probably already doing: going car-free once a week. So step up, take credit, and get entered to win these prizes from New American Dream: Grand Prize: A one-week Bike Tour of Oregon for you and a friend, provided by Sustainable Energy in Motion Second Prize: A Villager U-frame Breezer Bike Third Prize: A $200 carbon offset from Native Energy (and a snazzy t-shirt as well) |
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| Topics: cars, green living, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Engines could easily gulp less gas
MIT lab rats cook up a less wasteful gasoline engine |
Elsa Mary |
03 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Don't hum the requiem for the gasoline engine just yet. MIT brainiacs say it's easier than imagined to flip a car between the usual gas-guzzling state to a low-pollution, ultra-efficient mode. The researchers have tested a system that can run on a quarter less than the usual amount of gas without needing any fancy fuel. With the flick of a switch, the setup alternates between regular, spark-triggered combustion and experimental homogeneous charge compression ignitio ... |
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| Topics: cars, energy, fuel efficiency, green living, oil, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Ask a Brokeass: Trade wins
At last, a use for that old Milli Vanilli CD |
Kate Sheppard |
03 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Long ago, I promised an interview component to Ask a Brokeass. I've talked to some badass brokeasses since then, but I haven't gotten around to transcribing all of those interviews. The intern needs an intern. Then last week I received an email from Mark Hexamer, co-founder of the innovative new media trading site Swaptree.com, who saw my posts on the greening of Harry Potter and the virtues of sharing and wanted to talk up his project. What's greener than an eco- ... |
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| Topics: green living, placemaking, recycling, waste, websites (all these topics) |
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Of cars and carbon
How the Prius stacks up against other cars |
Clark Williams-Derry |
02 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Sure, everybody knows that what you drive affects how much you warm the climate. But after the jump: a chart that proves the point. Just to be clear: this includes only the emissions from the highway fuel itself. It doesn't include upstream emissions from drilling for oil and refining it into gasoline or diesel. And it doesn't include emissions from vehicle manufacturing. In other words, these are conservative figures -- so use them with caution. This is ... |
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| Topics: cars, climate, green living, greenhouse-gas emissions, placemaking (all these topics) |
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More ways to use our friend the wind's energy
Clever video |
JMG |
01 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| A short video -- proof that ingenuity is alive and well: |
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| Topics: bikes, green living, innovation, placemaking, wind power (all these topics) |
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They're counting on you
To count ... heh |
Kate Sheppard |
01 Aug 2007 |
Gristmill |
| WNYC is calling on New Yorkers to go outside and count the SUVs in their 'hood as part of an experiment in getting citizens involved in the reporting process. Sez their website: This our experiment in 'crowdsourcing,' where we employ you, the listener, in an act of journalism. We're trying to find out just how much gas-guzzling SUV use there is throughout the New York area, with all the talk of environmental sustainability in the city. So you go out and repor ... |
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| Topics: cars, green living, New York, New York City, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Aero 101
Airliners are shaped the way they are for a reason |
biodiversivist |
29 Jul 2007 |
Gristmill |
| We took our Prius over the mountains a few weeks back. I was looking forward to testing it at the extreme end of its design envelope, with a bulky cargo carrier to boot. This gave me an opportunity to see how much highway mileage would be affected by aerodynamic drag. Yes, yes, I should have stuck to the speed limit, but by not doing so I preemptively squashed a bitching point leveled by hybrid hatas -- Prius drivers sticking to the speed limit are always getting in t ... |
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| Topics: cars, electric vehicles, green living, hybrids, placemaking, Prius, tech (all these topics) |
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Congestion pricing saves more than it costs
Bloomberg’s law: Environment equals economic growth |
Grist |
28 Jul 2007 |
Gristmill |
| This guest essay comes from Steven Cohen and Jacob Victor. Steven Cohen is executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and director of its Master of Public Administration Program in Environmental Science and Policy at the School of International and Public Affairs. Jacob Victor is an intern at Columbia's Earth Institute. After overcoming numerous obstacles in Albany, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's controversial congestion-pricing plan finally appear ... |
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| Topics: cars, green living, New York, New York City, placemaking, politics, public transportation, urban planning (all these topics) |
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Plug-in hybrids rule; PHEV Hypercars rule even more
Let's go all the way |
Gar Lipow |
26 Jul 2007 |
Gristmill |
| When David pointed out that plug-in electric hybrids (PHEVs) can reduce carbon emissions in all possible futures, two main arguments were raised in opposition -- practicality, and the possibility that they will provide too low a reduction, while blocking the path to something better. The way commercial plug-ins look to be implemented within the next five years is that normal hybrids will be built with large batteries and the ability to plug into a socket in your d ... |
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| Topics: cars, electric vehicles, energy, fuel efficiency, green living, hybrids, placemaking, tech (all these topics) |
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Bicycle shame
Alan Durning on whether biking is for children and for losers |
Alan Durning |
26 Jul 2007 |
Gristmill |
| You don't have to go farther than Hollywood to see one reason Bicycle Neglect is so rampant in North America. Consider the 2005 film The 40-Year-Old Virgin. The middle-aged protagonist, obsessed with video games and action figures, seems stuck in early adolescence. The film spends two hours lampooning him for being emasculated, immature -- not a real man. His vehicle? A bike. (You can almost hear the schoolyard snickers.) To be a successful adult, apparently, you h ... |
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| Topics: bikes, green living, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Ask a Brokeass: Sharing is caring
Who are the people in your neighborhood, and what have they got to lend? |
Kate Sheppard |
25 Jul 2007 |
Gristmill |
| I don't actually have a question to respond to this week, so ... pretend like somebody asked something. Remember back when people actually used to stop by their neighbor's house and ask for a cup of sugar? OK, neither do I. Actually, the other day my boyfriend's neighbor came over and asked to borrow some aluminum foil, and he was sort of shocked. I think it was the first time he'd ever even seen the neighbor, which is impressively depressing, since they live in ti ... |
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| Topics: placemaking, green living (all these topics) |
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Step right up, get your 'lifestyle center'!
Walkable town centers are hip |
Jon Rynn |
24 Jul 2007 |
Gristmill |
| In 'Center points: Urban lifestyle gains foothold in growing list of suburbs,' a Chicago Tribune journalist describes the beginnings of a new phenomenon that could have a bigger impact than better CAFE standards, carbon taxes, or cap-and-trade of emissions, in my humble opinion: walkable town centers. If people could actually walk from their residence to a store, train station, or even work, perhaps the constant rise in miles driven in automobiles would start to come d ... |
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| Topics: green living, placemaking, urban planning (all these topics) |
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Clean diesel: General Motors says yes, Toyota, no
GM will offer clean diesel passenger cars in 2010 |
Erik Hoffner |
24 Jul 2007 |
Gristmill |
| GM is planning to bring diesel Saturns and Caddies to the U.S. market in 2010. (A Caddie that gets decent mileage? Who'd have guessed?) They join Nissan, Honda, DaimlerChrysler, and of course Volkswagen in planning to market clean diesels that will meet the new 2008 regulations on NOx and particulate emissions from diesel vehicles. Missing from this list of diesel adopters is Toyota, which is saying that clean diesels "... would end up being more expensive than ... |
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| Topics: green living, placemaking, cars, business, energy (all these topics) |
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Toyota moves to test plug-in Prius in Japan
It's getting closer |
Joseph Romm |
23 Jul 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Green Car Congress translated a story that appeared in the Japanese press: Toyota Motor Co. will obtain permission from Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport by the end of July for the testing of a prototype plug-in Prius on public roads. Toyota will be the first car maker to obtain permission for a plug-in hybrid test in Japan. After completing the road tests, Toyota will start building a way to market the model by leasing them to pu ... |
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| Topics: cars, electric vehicles, green living, hybrids, Japan, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Make me change my ways
Individuals support policies they don't live by voluntarily |
David Roberts |
23 Jul 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Over at the New Yorker, James Surowiecki draws our attention to this oddity: The curious fact is that many people buying three-ton Suburbans for that arduous two-mile trip to the supermarket also want Congress to pass laws making it harder to buy Suburbans at all. This is, he notes, not an isolated phenomenon: individuals often support policies that will force them to make different choices -- choices they're not willing to make of their own volition. Furthermore, ... |
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| Topics: green living, placemaking, politics (all these topics) |
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Go Get 'Em, Plugger
Plug-in hybrids would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, says new study |
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23 Jul 2007 |
Daily Grist |
| Go Get 'Em, Plugger Plug-in hybrids would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, says new study Plug-in hybrid vehicles, long extolled here at Grist HQ, seem always to elicit one question from doubters: Wouldn't running cars on electricity just mean more emissions from power plants? Answer: No! According to a ne ... |
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| Topics: ... climate, electric vehicles, electricity grid, energy, fuel efficiency, green living, greenhouse-gas emissions, hybrids, news, placemaking (all these topics) |
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Toyota moves to corner the 'plug-in' market
Announces development plans |
Joseph Romm |
23 Jul 2007 |
Gristmill |
| Plug-ins are on the way! We've said it many times, but then we aren't the world's leading auto maker. The Christian Science Monitor reports: Toyota's revelation Tuesday that it will develop a new "plug-in hybrid" - which uses a wall socket at night to charge and relies on an electric motor to go many miles before sipping any gasoline - could presage a major shift in automotive technology, some industry analysts say. Detroit's Big Three hav ... |
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| Topics: cars, electric vehicles, green living, hybrids, placemaking (all these topics) |
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